Yellen, Janet Louise (1946-…), an American economist, became secretary of the United States Department of the Treasury in 2021. In that position, she served in the Cabinet of President Joe Biden. She became the first woman to serve as treasury secretary.
From 2014 to 2018, Yellen had served as chair of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. The Federal Reserve System, commonly called the Fed, is the central banking system of the United States. As such, the Fed oversees the financial system and conducts the nation’s monetary policy. Monetary policy involves altering the money supply to influence economic activity and the overall health of the economy. Yellen became the first woman to lead the Fed.
Yellen was born on Aug. 13, 1946, in the Brooklyn section of New York City. She graduated from Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, in 1967 with a bachelor’s degree in economics. She received a doctorate in economics from Yale University in 1971. In 1978, Yellen married the American economist George A. Akerlof. Akerlof was awarded the Nobel Prize in economic sciences in 2001.
From 1971 to 1976, Yellen taught economics at Harvard University. She became a member of the faculty at the University of California-Berkeley in 1980. Yellen served on the Fed’s Board of Governors from 1994 to 1997. She was chair of the Council of Economic Advisers under President Bill Clinton from 1997 to 1999. Yellen became president of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco in 2004. In 2010, President Barack Obama appointed her vice chair of the Fed. Obama appointed Yellen to succeed Ben Bernanke as Fed chair in 2014. Yellen’s term as Fed chair ended in February 2018. She was succeeded by Jerome H. Powell. The U.S. Senate confirmed Yellen as secretary of the Department of the Treasury in January 2021.
